How To: Copy OS to disk from dos??

[LoneWolf1]

I know this subject has been beat to death, but I can't find it anywhere.

After I FDISK and FORMAT my HDD, I want to copy my OS(W98se) to my HDD and then install it from there. Also, I will be booting from floppy, so what is the easiest way to load the CD drivers to make this work?

Thanks in advance.

~~LoneWolf1

 

[jfall]

Just make a boot disk in Windows. Got to Control Panel > Add Remove Programs > Startup Disk. This will allow you to boot the computer with CD ROM support. Format/Fdisk your hard drive. CD to your CDROM Drive (might be a different drive letter, it should tell you when the floppy is booting). Copy the WIN98 directory from the CD to your hard drive, CD to the directory you copied the files to and run setup.exe.

 

[LoneWolf1]

That much I know already.


<< Copy the WIN98 directory from the CD to your hard drive >>

What I don't know, are the dos commands for copying the win98 directory to the hard drive.

 

[woodie1]

At the DOS prompt type > C:

MD Win98

Assuming your CD-ROM is D: type

copy D:\Win98\*.* C:\win98

There is a space between the * and C:

 

[Olias]

Here is a quick way of transferring your existing Windows 98 to the new harddrive without having to reinstall...

Method of Transferring Windows 9x to Another Drive

Set up the new drive as a slave or secondary master and make sure your computer?s BIOS properly detects it. Then partition the new drive and set its primary partition as active. Now format the new primary partition and add the system files in the process. (i.e.) FORMAT D: /s

Reboot into Windows and verify that the new D: drive has the system files on it.
· COMMAND.COM
· IO.SYS (hidden)
· MSDOS.SYS (hidden)

The xcopy32.exe program will be used to copy the files without losing their long file names. This method involves copying the files while running Windows. Click on the START button, and then select RUN. Once at the RUN prompt, the following command can be used to copy the entire contents of the C: drive to the new D: drive (substitute the drive letters that match your configuration, if different):

c:\windows\command\xcopy32 c:\*.* d: /h /c /e /k

After the copy process is complete, replace the ?msdos.sys? file on the d: drive with the one from the c: drive. This is necessary to insure that the boot process knows that Windows exists and how to load it.

XCOPY32 Parameters:
/h - copy hidden and system files
/c - continue if any errors occur *
/e - causes subdirectories, including empty ones, to be copied
/k - causes attributes to be copied intact.

* Note: A share violation error will happen when trying to copy WIN386.SWP but Windows will automatically build a new swap file on the first boot of the new drive.

Now you are ready to power down and swap the master/slave drive assignment. This is usually done with small jumper blocks on the drive itself. However, if the new drive was installed as a master on the secondary IDE port, then you only have to swap the ribbon cables.

Once complete, the new drive should boot into Windows and the old drive can be wiped clean or simply removed from the system.

 

[corkyg]

You are right . . . you can't copy directories with sub-directories in DOS without using the XCOPY.EXE or XCOPY32.EXE command. (Unless you painstakingly do it one directory at a time and create the subs manually as you go.) Here's the syntax:

XCOPY [d1]: /e /s /v [d2}:

d1 is the drive and address of the source and d2 is that of the target.

The switches mean:

/e = directs XCOPY to create a copy of any empty sub-directory it runs into.
/s = tells XCOPY to copy all the files in sub-directories below the specified source directory.
/v = tells it to verify each copy.

There are other switches, but these basically do the job. This is the old fashioned way we used to move a system from one hard drive to another. For the youngsters, directories are now called "folders."

 

[LoneWolf1]

Everyone thanks for the help. Olias & corky-g: Thanks for the extra info, but I don't plan on copying any files to another hard drive(except for what I need to backup). I'm going to format and reinstall to get rid of all the junk that has built up over the last few months. I figure it'll be easier than going thru and uninstalling programs & deleting files I don't use/need anymore.


<< For the youngsters, directories are now called "folders." >>

LOL...So thats what they're callin' 'em these days.